NASHVILLE— Some memories of Adnan Hodzic’s early childhood come to him only in flashes.

Hodzic, a forward at Lipscomb who is the top returning scorer in the nation, never had a plastic basketball hoop or an orange foam basketball growing up. He rarely even went outside to play. Instead, Hodzic remembers running through the streets of Sarajevo with his mother with bullets flying.

“It’s really hard to remember, man,” Hodzic says. “I remember a lot of war stuff. You know—bombs, gun shots, hiding. I also remember a loving family. Beautiful country. Granted, a lot of stuff I remember is bad.”

Hodzic, who averaged 22.7 points per game last season and won Atlantic Sun player of the year honors, was the first in his family to touch a basketball. For a time, neither Hodzic nor his family knew if he’d have the opportunity to do even that, much less that his mother, father and older sister Amina one day would be able to drive a few hours to watch him play college basketball.

Hodzic is 21. He was 3 when Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence from the former Yugoslavia. With his father, Mehmed, in the Bosnian army and a home in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, Adnan was in the middle of one of Europe’s bloodiest conflicts since World War II.